Greetings BP community, I recently joined a national senior care living development team. I'm coming from smaller scale mixed use development and fundraising. I'm data driven and would love to immerse myself in IL, ...

Are they professional in their interactions?

But, you still own house and benefits are as follows.1. tax benefits2. principal payoff on your note.3.

With the purchase, the rehab, the closing costs and the holding costs (hard money, taxes, insurance, utilities) our all in is around $200,000, but we have created $40,000 in equity.

BTW behind Texas.When all forms of taxes are calculated (income, property, and sales tax), CA ranks below the middle of the nation in total tax rate.  

How do we minimize taxes on the profit we're making on this first home? 

There may be tax implications to that maneuver, so check with a CPA.

I do a meetup in Mesa on Saturday morning's which is a good place to come meet even more RE professionals and investors.You have the experience so now you just need the right strategy to grow the portfolio.

You can probably beat $2000/year insurance, but the management fee should be 10%, you need to factor in turnover too and 5% is probably not enough for both maintenance and turnover and I assume you added it, but you didn't mention property taxes (which have been terrible in Jackson County lately since Frank White decided to jack them through the roof). 

You might even want to setup a C-Corp (for tax and liability reasons as well) to manage the business with the guests and pay rent to your LLC.